Removable dental appliances, such as clear plastic tooth-positioning appliances and retainers, have been used in orthodontic treatments as an alternative to braces and other bonded orthodontic equipment for controlled tooth movement to, and/or for retaining teeth in, a predetermined position. Such a dental appliance can be made so that it is removable to allow a wearer to periodically remove the dental appliance to eat, drink, brush, floss, etc.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,975,893 and 6,183,248 provide an example of such removable tooth-positioning appliances. A patient is typically provided a plurality of appliances which are configured to be placed successively on the patient's teeth to incrementally reposition the teeth from an initial tooth arrangement to a final tooth arrangement. The set of appliances given to a patient have geometries selected to progressively reposition the teeth from the initial tooth arrangement, through successive intermediate arrangements and, ultimately, to the final tooth arrangement.
To achieve the movement of a tooth from one position to another position, such a tooth-positioning appliance can be relatively rigid. The stiffness of the appliance provides the re-positioning force necessary to move the teeth and ensures that the dental appliance remains securely placed on the wearer's teeth.
An appliance wearer may remove the positioning appliance frequently throughout the day. The stiffness of the dental appliance and the typically tightly-conforming fit of the dental appliance to the wearer's teeth can make it difficult for the wearer to remove the appliance. Appliance wearers are typically instructed to use their fingers and fingernails to remove the appliances, but they often find removing the appliances to be difficult and in many cases painful.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2009/0258323 is entitled, “Outie Tool for Removal of a Plastic Tooth Positioning Appliance or Aligner (Invisible Braces) From Teeth of a Patient.” The “Outie Tool” is a straight rigid barrel with a lever appendage on one proximal end for removing a lower aligner and a hook appendage on the other end for removing an upper aligner. Such prior removal tools can be difficult for many appliance wearers to use effectively. As such, there continues to be a need to provide a compact and convenient tool that is specifically designed to remove a dental appliance from a user's teeth in a safe and effective manner.
It will be appreciated that this background description has been created by the inventor to aid the reader, and is not to be taken as an indication that any of the indicated problems were themselves appreciated in the art. While the described principles can, in some aspects and embodiments, alleviate the problems inherent in other systems, it will be appreciated that the scope of the protected innovation is defined by the attached claims, and not by the ability of any disclosed feature to solve any specific problem noted herein.